Bidding Farewell to Birmingham

Well, our last month living in England. Already? Wow, did that ever go fast. This month we decided we would stay in England. Usually we try and get to another part of Europe for an adventure, but we thought we would continue exploring England before we left. We started cancelling bills, and quit our jobs for good. See, I've quit my job about 6 times now, so nobody believed me when I put in my notice this time.

For dinner one night we ordered curry with our flatmate The Vegan Engineer. It was delicious. We also created our 'Bucket List' to help ourselves get through this hard time of moving away from this life we built in England.

We decided to go to Powis Castle, a castle in Welshpool, Wales. We had only been to Wales once before. We were there on our trip to Cardiff. We wanted to go again plus we were looking for a castle to visit that wasn't too far from Birmingham. We found Powis Castle looking for castles on Google maps and we had a great day trip there.

We gorged into the food Birmingham has to offer. Another stop at 3 Threes, and we attended our last Birmingham Vegans Pizza Night.

Plantbased Nurse volunteers at the Retired Greyhound Trust. They need Volunteers, so if you are in the Birmingham area and want to help, please do.

Pizza night was also my 7 year veganiversary. It was wonderful celebrating with so many like minded people.

We have been looking for the Ozzy Osborne signature on the new tram line, since August. The tram happen to stop right beside us as we were walking through city centre. We have been looking at every tram since August. Coincidence? We happen to see it before we left Birmingham?

My last day of work finally came. A lovely send off. 'Keep Calm, She's Finally Leaving' Thanks guys. I really feel the love. I had a great time working with these lovely people for the last year and a half.

After dinner we dropped them off at the Mega Bus stop and made our way to Cherry Reds for our last Birmingham Vegans Drinks Night. It was a fun night, and we got to see a lot of our friends. One was up from London, so she planned a dinner for tomorrow at Cafe Soya... Alright, we can eat there two nights in a row..

About 10 of us showed up for dinner. Luckily Cafe Soya, has such a large vegan menu that we had a lot of choice for dinner the second night.

The next morning we agreed to help our fellow vegan and rip up a concrete floor in the new vegan cafe that will be opening soon in Birmingham. Sadly we wont be here to go when they open, but at least we know that the shop will sort of look like. We spent a few hours scrapping up the concrete. (We also had a major snow storm in Birmingham, so we spent some time playing the the snow.)

Once we got home from our manual labour, we got ready and headed to Pho for dinner with Plantbased Nurse. We hadn't been before, but we are glad we made it there before we left. All the food was delicious! For some dessert, we headed to 3 Threes for some cupcakes before heading home,

Sunday morning we met Plantbased Nurse at the cinema, and watched the new Lego Batman film. It was quite humouros. Then we got ready for our adventure to the Northern part of England.

We've heard lots of great things about York and how beautiful it is but we've never had a chance to visit before. On our way to visit a friend in Durham we made sure to stop in York since we had to change trains anyway. We made it so we had 5 hours to explore York which was a decent amount of time to walk around and see some sights. Read more: EPIC Five Hours in York, UK

We visited our friend in Durham who was kind enough to host us. We walked around the town which is quite charming and went in Durham Cathedral. Interestingly enough, Durham Cathedral and Durham Castle were used in filming the Harry Potter movies. Read more: Visiting Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Once we were in Durham it was only a quick train ride over to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. We went there in the morning and walked around the city. We saw Newcastle Castle, Millenium Bridge, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, we walked around the shopping areas and ate lunch at Tea Sutra. Newcastle is a great city with plenty of interesting sights. Read more: A Day Trip to Newcastle Castle

When we got back from Northern England we continued getting ready for our going away party. We decided to throw a party at our flat with delicious food.

'Chicken' Korma and Skewers for dinner!

Our delicious spread of food! Nobody is going hungry at our house!

We had a great time hanging around and having some drinks.

It was a very lovely evening.

It's hard not to lick your lips during the doughnut challenge!

We are going to miss all these guys like crazy! It has been a wonderful two years and they all welcomed us into the Birmingham Vegans with open arms.

With our last few days in Birmingham we minimised our stuff. We got it down to a medium checked bag, a small carry on case, a backpack, a laptop case and a purse. This is one medium checked case less than when we arrived here almost two years ago. We made many donations to the Dog's Trust. We also had to go around changing our addresses. (Which is easier than we thought)

We went back to Mr. Singh's for one last pizza with a couple friends on our last night in Birmingham.

And For our last(for now) adventure in England we made our way to London for our last week.

As a vegetarian (not a vegan, as I do consume dairy products) I feel happy to all the food I can actually eat. I just did a post on English Cities and I know finding vegan food in England is relatively easy. And, do I see our Indian Roti there :-)

We crammed in a lot more than we thought we would. We got more holiday that we thought and we got decent jobs to pay for all our trips. We'd like to go back to Birmingham in the future because I'm sure it is going to change even more with all the construction projects.

I'm not that actually fond of eating vegetables but your pics and the food that you've featured looked enticing. Maybe will try it soon and see for myself if it suits my tastebuds. You surely had a great time on your visit. :) :) :)

Already 7 years as a vegan?!? awesome... I want to be first vegetarian, just finish to eat meet a year ago, beginning stop with fish. Next Sunday i will arrive in Birmingham, will stay for a few days with a friend who live there, I think I will take her to that pizza place, looks delicious :)Best of luck for your new life far from Birmingham!!

Your post reminded me of the good old collage days. The food looks yumm. Glad you all had a wonderful time. I can somehow relate - being a vegetarian and having quit my job already 4 times...close behind you :D

First of all, congratulation for your 7th anniversary as a vegan. Well done! Did you found difficult to transit into that diet? Leaving a place where we lived for 2 years is always sad, but as you pointed out in this post you have so many good memories to take with you.

Thank you. We didn't find the switch from non vegan foods to vegans foods difficult. Living a vegan lifestyle is very easy, especially if you are in the right mindset. What is difficult is the people around you who are constantly questioning your new choices.

I'm so jealous of all the wonderful relationships you've cultivated through the int'l vegan community! How great that you got to participate in so many things and help your friends. Also all these food pictures are KILLING me. Everything looks so delicious!

I keep on reading your articles and every time I do, it makes me proud that you guys find it sustainable to live in this kind of healthy lifestyle for years. I was once a vegetarian, but stopped after I went back to Southeast Asia. You guys really put effort in how to find food appropriate for your preference. The Keep Calm greetings made me laugh - you seemed to have awesome work colleagues! Cheers to England, I am sure your adventure was totally worth it.

I love Indian food too and even if I am not vegan I do enjoy eating like this from time to time. When I visited India, for a month I didn't touch meat and I was very happy, I found some really delicious dishes. You seem to have had a lot of fun in England and I am sure this is not a farewell but a see you later, as British people say :)

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